A new major build of The Spatials: Galactology is now available! The main highlights for this build are:

• Real civ ships in the galaxy, so when you get visitors or invasions, they will travel the galaxy map just as the player does. This also influences tourism, which now is generated by the civ systems in the galaxy.
• The Medus and the Chuchus, two new civs
• Item system enhancements, like looting, master craftsman bonuses, and a simpler power system
• New alert system, less annoying and more useful
• Made many fixes to attacks in order to standardize their procs and systems
• Introduced more crowd control items and a new item category, damage shields, for passive healing

And as always, many other little details. V3.4 is not save game compatible with v3.3 save files. But your saves are still there! If you want to keep playing them you can opt out of v3.4 by right clicking Galactology in your Steam library listing, select Properties, select Betas, then select the v3_3 branch. This will force your game installation to be v3.3 forever. When you are done make sure to go back to the default branch to keep getting updates and new features.

Much more informative tooltips in research screen

The research screen icons representing objects and recipes now display a lot more information. Before it was just the name, now it's:
This is a very often requested enhancement so it's good to have it now in-game.

Recipe and ingredient info for resources

Products will now display a simplified recipe information when displaying their information. And raw resources will also display a list of icons for the recipes they are an ingredient of:

New civs!

Meet the medus and the chuchus!

The medus are aquatic creatures that live inside a glass balls. Aided by their technology, they can enjoy your station amenities or vaporize your officers just fine.
The chuchus are a formerly brutal species that got a bit more civilized in the past millennia. Unlike currently brutal species they can be convinced to buy your shinny baubles in peace.

Autopilot visit icons in planets

The system view in the galaxy screen will now display an icon next to the planet to indicate if any ship has an autopilot order that visits that planet, plus the number of ships that do so. This will be very helpful when planning autopilot routes, so you can see quickly what planets are visited by your fleet and avoid making unwanted visits.

Warning icons and progress bars for jobs

Jobs now have an on-map progress bar to quickly glance how long is going to take. Consumption actions also display this progress bar. Jobs that have been stopped or have some kind of status warning will now also display an icon on top of them. Clicking the object will give more information, as before.

Raid landing area hint

It has been requested that there should be some indication of where a raiding party is going to strike. While we agree it's a good idea, having the exact position would cheese up too much the game, since then it's very easy to isolate it by removing corridors, for example. But we still wanted to add such a feature to the game, so now a big wide circle will be displayed. The raiding party will spawn inside this circle, but the exact position will be random inside its area.

Invaders shuttle

Raiding parties will now arrive by shuttle and stop just over the spawning area, to make this station event a nicer feeling. The shuttles are unique for each civ. We really want to go back to adding new station events, and making a better design of the current ones is a first step.

Looting

Now that there's an item system, looting items dropped by enemies is back in the game:
First an item generation and spawning proc was added to enemy deaths. This is straightforward for the station, and it actually doesn't involve any looting at all, since everything that falls on the station floor is yours to keep. For planets a similar system to V2 was adopted, you need to order your officers to walk near the dropped items to loot them. They are then added to the exploring ship cargo (with zero mass), and dropped on your station when your crew goes back.

Master item making bonuses

Items can now have extra bonuses over what is provided by the basic item template:
In the example screenshot, the item is "Strong" because it includes an extra health bonus (no gun has +health, by default), and it's "Epic" because said health bonus is +2 levels above the item roll. For now only master engineers are able to produce such items, with a chance proportional to their experience.

Revamped alerts

The remake of the alert system is underway, and it's looking much better already:
Alerts should be useful, not something that gets in the way, and the old ported over system from V2 wasn't very good. Alerts are now a lot more robust and have new features. Clicking any alert popup will automatically change the screen and focus on the correct object. Alerts are now also displayed as icons at the top of the screen. Clicking the icons has the same effect, plus also bringing up again the alert popup. Inside the popup you will also find buttons to hide it again, or to delete it forever.

Final UI/UX for alert bar

The prototype alert bar introduced in the last update has now been fleshed out and it has taken on a more important role. Alerts will now be displayed one by one, to avoid the much reported spam. They all will still be displayed, but at a slower pace. You will also be able to select recent alerts by clicking on them on the alert bar, or delete them by right clicking. A focus rectangle is now displayed to highlight the corresponding alert icon in the alert bar.

Unification of specialized passive power bonuses in items

Items do not boost any more a particular kind of combat action. Instead a new generic bonus as been introduced, "power". This bonus is automatically added every time an active combat action is performed by the officer or NPC, no matter what kind it is. This simplification was introduced in order to make officer specs participate in combat bonuses:
The spec factor gets multiplied to the power bonus from wearable items. This makes clothing easier (removing complexity from gearing officers), while making officer specialization more important and meaningful.

Refactor of procs for active combat items

Combat items now have independent proc and effects. The proc is what "carries" the attack (a projectile, a bomb, a beam, etc.). The effect is what happens when the proc is done (damage, healing, crowd control, etc). This change makes it easier to develop new items.

New attacks

For procs, there's now support for damage over time areas and direct attacks. For effects, crowd control has been fleshed out and there's now items that can make officers and NPC dizzy, sleepy or crazy. And finally work is also starting on a new kind of combat action: damage shields.

Damage absorption shields

A new kind of combat ability is now in the game:
Damage shields are an alternative way of providing healing to your officers. They spawn an hemispherical shield over its area of protection, usually centered in the casting officer:
After it's spawned it will absorb every damage hit sustained by friendly units under its surface. It will be destroyed once its own HP reaches 0, or when a timer runs out. Any officer will be able to wield this ability, but it will be much more potent in the hands of a Scientist.

Civ ships visiting your station

Other civ ships are now able to visit your home asteroid, and they will be displayed in the galaxy map:
This is the backbone of making more sense of some station systems and events, so other civs NPC wanting to visit your station first have to get there, instead of magically spawning. No more than one ship will be spawned per system, to keep their numbers under control. A galaxy filter will be implemented later on to hide these ships, if the user desires so.

Civ-specific shuttles, visitors and ships

As a continuation of the on-galaxy civ ships, visitors now arrive in one of those ships, and dock in your station using a civ specific shuttle:
Visitors will respect its visiting ship schedule, coming and going using their respective ships.

Invasions based on ships, hostile event gating

The next system to migrate to galaxy ships will be group invasions. Before any group invasion happens a ship will have to be spawned from an hostile system, so the advance notice for the invasion will make more sense (and the area warning will also be kept). This means the user first has to unlock a system with a hostile civ before invasions start. Other smaller invasion events, like sneakers and impostors, will also be locked this way, making the early game free of invaders.

Technical development notes

- add richer popups for research tree recipes, objects and floors have full panel info equivalent - display mini recipe in info panel for products separate from basic info to not be reduntant in research screen - display mini "ingredient of" in info panel for resources just list of icons for recipes - update planet editor mod - add all sprites for new civs - hide walls should be persisting in the game model - add build info text line about object solid mode - add info text and image to pallet build info panel - fix storage area once for all stronger buildable check on building area, refuses if room is not empty for every other object building attempt (!) refuses if area is present - hide aesthetics bar - create new civ rules - scale planet buildings to planet level (prev was only for enemies) - auto scale station object hp based on unlocked invader level, plus some auto factoring of the kind of object add manual factors for doors and similar - auto scale station turret attack power based on invader tech level - fix: interrupted vital objects do not reset pose to idle - plain bed must be listed before officer bed - building job and out of money keeps officers becoming busy for no reason fix job sm to not go into wait-for-worker when missing money - viz in galaxy for planets visited by autopilot show icon in planets visited by autopilots - more icon and progress vis on top of factories feedback for % work progress, bar on top of object icon with job warning - spawn some kind of marker with the "incoming raiders" warning to indicate the area of arrival, 1m in advance do a big circle with some random offset to avoid cheesing with floor deletion - add hovering pirate etc shuttle over the spot where invaders spawn enter and exit animations - test drops on death on station (no problem with pickup or ship transports) - item drops and pickup on planets store metas in ship on ship station arrival dump metas as new items looter system for officers in planet - show looted items in bridge stock view - ship bridge placeholder job should not display warning icons - add goal and counters for looting - remove shower demands from master specs - remove in-shop and in-storage components from resource stack when dismantling any pallet like object re-enable passive shop and storage marking system - item forge: masters with high xp can add random extra bonus to item also change meta name chance is factored over XP ramp past master level Rare: +1 level bump for bonus, 15% max chance Epic: +2 level bump for bonus, 5% max chance Legendary: +3 level bump for bonus, 2% max chance Powerful: +dmg, Surgical: +healing - don't add those to items that doesn't make sense to Strong: +hp add bonus on top of existing bonus for items that already have it - alerts revamp: model focus must support checks for liveness any entity from any world (also support planets) position on a world officer for staff ship for bridge planet galaxy introduce internal IDs for ships and officers (sigh) icon: any frame or any officer id flags for enabling minimize and trashing keep existing flags for read, etc. - alerts revamp: UI update report log icon with subject clickable popup to focus timer is prop to text size minimize button to keep around in alert bar icon alert bar shows latest alerts trash button to remove from alert bar - change alert popup display system only one alert is ever displayed icons for pending messages get an icon to indicate it user can interact any time and override the displayed popup each message gets a display time then moves away to display the next pending one - more alerts final code for autodeletion, respect the canTrash flag keep just latest 10 alerts any required fixed alerts, independent of MAX_ALERTS right click alert bar icon to delete it check throttling for some alerts (going crazy, strike, demands) add cursor rect for open alert popup over its icon in the bar - fix: highlighted alert icons look bad use a simple dot instead - fix: panning from system to system is introducing artifacts - items: introduce active items with crowd control power - items: unify all bonus powers under a "power" stat - items: classes can now factor over the bonus power medics: extra power to healing strategist, engineer: extra power to damage diplomat: extra better CC power rolls scientist: extra power to absorb think about enemies too pick a base bonus based on carried active item - add factor and base bonus to aggressor info panel - add spec factor bonus to staff screen - fix equip matrix filter - new standarized proc "carriers" for combat Direct affect a single target directly Beam point to a target or point then produce a ray that can hit anything between it and the target Instant circle area Centered on a target or point, affect everything inside its area Projectile an entity is spawned and moves in a direction until it hits something, or some time passes Explosive projectile same as projectile but does a circle area on hit, instead of single target Reactive circle a circle is put on a point or target, then ticks a proc fast, with a duration, start radius, end radius procs are called at random for entity hits Reactive projectile same as explosive, but the circle is held for N seconds - compose functions for sounds and sprites - new standarized hit procs for damage and healing proc is passed reason of call: hit with map, hit with entity, timeout - port all existing items to the new proc system test and debug - new crowd control procs and items add cc proc support various kinds of cc applied based on power formula roll vs max hp stun attack items - final attack selection for active items - fix: after new combat changes, officer attacks and healings do not have any effect - review random picker for enemy npcs for new items - fix: sleep stun should work for all entities - new shield items and mechanic vis: hemisphere dome of horizontal lines model: on every hit, a point query is performed to catch any friendly shield then decrease delta from shield hp until it goes 0 or less, then destroy also destroy on timeout introduce optional delta proc for vitals - bump save version - wider squad bar buttons with hp bars - fix: dont call hit proc on healing (blood) - per-system civ alien ships one potential ship per system n equal to systems, so max 1 ship per system, goes nice with progression model declare all civ ships add ship name to civ model add shuttle name to civ model fleet has separate set for civ ships galaxy view iterates over both, disables most interactions for civ ships - docking for visitors "waiting for a free dock" concept ships come from friendly systems by themselves and park in home consider all home parked npc ships, visitor travel ship state must be VISITOR_SHIP_WAITING_DOCK never use central teleporter only use built docks if all are in use, it waits parked for a max of X minutes use correct shuttle for the ship civ - fix: errors on notifications for sneakers and others - fix: hit proc is randomly firing for blueprint objects - fix: civ ships should not be clickable in any way - fix invasion event: do it visitor ship based, with warnings dont do it in the system tick, keep the central event control for this, and use a helper to find a system use faster ship so only can come from hostile systems base invader level on tech unlock level, not highest planet level divide event in two halves, so the raid event is independent from the ship launching event - fix sneaker event: if no hostile systems are open, do not enable and make sure aggressor civ matches a civ with open systems - fix impostor event: if no hostile systems are open, do not enable and make sure aggressor civ matches a civ with open systems - proper rep deltas and display from killing enemies - tourist deaths should carry large rep loses - sync planet constructions with greatly increased rates for all involved models (build, rep, storage, etc) - fix: proper visitor ship timings - tourism: advert buildings (1 per planet) makes visitor ship cycle go faster for their system, up to 3x - system view with civ filter should display icon for embassy, recruitment and ads objects - diplomacy system: delta+ for hostile allow embassies buildable on hostile, no margin area make them invulnerable ask for them to be built near any town also for recruit and ads objs, but only with friendly towns - fix: stop planet enemies from attacking fauna, stop fauna from attacking enemies - galaxy view filter to display all ships or only player ships with save game persistence - double points gained from research, reduce xp tiers a bit - add hp power factor to all officer specs, including redshirts, for balance vs npc - dont spawn fauna in tutoland - update vis for any item stacks after obj destruction

[ 2016-12-17 16:57:12 CET ] [ Original post ]